I was about two minutes away from hitting the publish button, on a post about how I was frustrated that the iPad wouldn’t be delivered today, when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. It was the UPS driver, he asked me to meet him outside to grab a package. I was told by not only Apple, but also several sources from UPS that iPad’s would not be delivered, here in Hawaii, until Monday because UPS didn’t do Saturday delivery in my area. This was frustrating because we of course wanted to bring our readers coverage of the device from day one (and who isn’t excited to get a new gadget!) but it was starting to look like we wouldn’t be able to do that. Despite the email from Apple and several confirmations from within UPS, the iPad got here on April 3rd, as promised, and the box had a nice big “Saturday inch sticker on it. Well played UPS — thanks for getting it here on time even if there was some sort of miscommunication!

Apple iPad Product Page (specs, news, links, and more)

So we’ve got our iPad and we’re ready to start checking it out. I’ll spare you are lengthy unboxing as the whole thing is relatively simple, and has been covered to death by the rest of the world by now. I’ll just drop a few pictures and a very short video, and that’ll be that for the unboxing and we’ll quickly move on to the more exciting stuff!

I was about two minutes away from hitting the publish button, on a post about how I was frustrated that the iPad wouldn’t be delivered today, when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. It was the UPS driver, he asked me to meet him outside to grab a package. I was told by not only Apple, but also several sources from UPS that iPad’s would not be delivered, here in Hawaii, until Monday because UPS didn’t do Saturday delivery in my area. This was frustrating because we of course wanted to bring our readers coverage of the device from day one (and who isn’t excited to get a new gadget!) but it was starting to look like we wouldn’t be able to do that. Despite the email from Apple and several confirmations from within UPS, the iPad got here on April 3rd, as promised, and the box had a nice big “Saturday” sticker on it. Well played UPS — thanks for getting it here on time even if there was some sort of miscommunication!

Apple iPad Product Page (specs, news, links, and more)

So we’ve got our iPad and we’re ready to start checking it out. I’ll spare you are lengthy unboxing as the whole thing is relatively simple, and has been covered to death by the rest of the world by now. I’ll just drop a few pictures and a very short video, and that’ll be that for the unboxing and we’ll quickly move on to the more exciting stuff!

Updated (18 Jan 2010) with the Intel IPAD that I had never heard of until I read about it today. Shame on me!

I’ve been writing about ‘pads’ , tablets and other consumer and mobile internet devices for over 4 years now. Carrypad started through a desire for a new category of devices and under various names it focused on a sector that most people simply dismissed. ‘There’s no room for a device between a smartphone and a laptop’ they said; conveniently forgetting their digital camera, navigation device, book, gaming device and the growing need to surf while on the crapper.

Today, the iPad landed and has turned the tech-media world from nay-sayers to yay-sayers. Everyone loves the iPad and the coverage has sky-rocketed. Unfortunately, it’s not really happening here because I’m in Europe and sales haven’t started here yet. Can you imagine how frustrating it is for me?

Being English though I’m biting my lip and trying to positive and focusing on the iPad coverage that starts here on Monday when Ben, our Senior Editor, gets his iPad out in Honolulu. It’s a shame that there’s no Saturday delivery service but we’ll let the Engadgets of this world deal with the Day 1 craziness and take some time to read the first reports over the weekend.

Another slightly frustrating  element of iPad day one is thinking back on all the iPad-like devices that tried so hard to get it right before so while we’re waiting for the iPad, I think we should raise a few of the Pads of the Past up onto the pedestal and say ‘thank you.’

My first hat-tip goes out to Pepperpad who in 2005 produced a 9 inch touchscreen device running on an ARM core and running a heavily tailored finger-friendly user-interface. The specifications list and focal point of the device sounds like a true winner but Pepper Computer were simply too early.  The initial price was high, the performance was terrible and the battery life wasn’t that thrilling. Personally I loved the device (I bought a PepperPad 3, the 7 inch version) although it wasn’t exactly pretty! Unfortunately Pepper went under before they could realize their ideas with better technology.

My second shout-out in the consumer internet device category goes to Nokia who took a big risk and released the 770 Internet tablet in late 2005. It was aimed at people wanting media, a good web browser and was the first in a range of four devices that used a community-supported Linux build called Maemo. Maemo is now an important part of a long-term strategy for Intel and Nokia in their MeeGo product and is for me the most interesting ecosystems for building consumer internet devices.

The third and final shout goes to Archos who for many years have been combining media playback with Internet connectivity in an easy-to-use consumer-focused package. I still have (and use) my 605Wifi and it taught me that while the 605 was very slow to access web pages, I had more patience for slow websites when I was sitting in a comfy chair. Archos are now at the stage where they have a family of consumer internet devices from 5 inch to 9 inch and are planning to launch even more this summer.

Update: All the devices above date back to 2005 when I was starting to get very interested in the idea of a companion device but there are plenty of devices that pre-date these. The Intel IPAD, for example, is the most amazing story. Intel used ARM CPUs (they has an ARM license and Xscale, ARM architecture CPUs) in a product that, internally, was called the IPAD. It allowed you to surf ‘up to 150 feet’ from your PC. It almost reached the market but got stopped by another initiative in Intel. Read the story of the Intel IPAD here.

So to everyone that was part of Origami, the ultra mobile PC world, all the Tablet PC fans and bloggers and the thousands and thousand of people that have discussed the idea of mobile and handheld computing with me over the years I raise my glass.

Written, 29th-31st March.

When the iPhone launched, it entered a pre-existing smartphone market. It was a great event for consumers because manufacturers in that market were forced to play catch-up which meant great options and deals for customers. In the Consumer Internet Device space of the iPad, the landscape is different. This time round Apple have stepped into a relatively new market and set up shop alone. There they sit with their complete product offering (at a great price) and wait for competitors. They’re likely to be waiting a long time because the iPad outshines anything we’ve seen in prototype form from anyone else by a huge margin and it would be safe to assume that every financial director responsible for a consumer handheld product has put the brakes on their own products. It means that instead of manufacturers increasing their efforts to put new devices out there, many of the new products will get held up, or even canned. For the smaller companies like ICD, Fusion Garage and Notion Ink, this could be catastrophic as investors re-asses the opportunity. If they are lucky, some of the prototype products will end up going back to the drawing board where the system integrators will be pondering long and strong over their app-stores and content offerings. The big problem here though is that there isn’t an OS or application ecosystem out there that can compete. I can’t think of any worthy alternative to the iPhone /iPad OS right now.

Forget any unknown (outside geek circles) Linux distributions because they lack a reputable app-store or focused developer community. Forget Maemo, Moblin or MeeGo because they won’t be ready until much later in the year. Forget any new unknown proprietary OS because the customer won’t trust it and the developers won’t be interested. Forget Windows 7 because it’s a big fat heavy blob that can’t keep up with finger-driven social, photo and location-aware applications. Even Android isn’t good enough and it’s worth discussing why.

I use Android on a daily basis and enjoy it a lot. The Archos 5 is a fantastic internet device but it highlights why Android is useless. Android doesn’t have a marketplace. The Android you’re thinking of is ‘Google’  Android and it makes a huge difference to the product.

The Marketplace and other closed-source, approval-required Google apps is what makes Android tick and any Android tablet that tries to enter the marketplace without it is committing suicide. The disappointment experienced by people when they can’t sync their mail or even populate their contacts application, access Google Maps, Buzz and other key apps will kill any momentum a device ever had. The problem is, these manufacturers are finding it difficult to get the marketplace and add it into Android. Google don’t appear to be  ready to expand outside the smartphone arena.  Maybe they’re scared of splintering Android. More splintering of the platform could upset developers and cause more application incompatibility problems and that would be an even bigger problem.

Mobinnova Beam, Archos 7 Home Tablet, Compaq AirLife 100 and other devices that I can’t talk about here are all going to hit a brick wall if they don’t get that app-store sorted out.

Right now, there isn’t an easy solution unless you’re a huge company with influence. Someone like Dell can make an oversize phone called the Dell Mini 5 and invest in the carrier deals, licensing, firmware support and certification processes that make Marketplace possible. That’s one product out of, what, 50 or so tablets, MIDs and smartbooks that we’ve seen at Computex, CES, CeBIT, MWC, CTIA and other shows. Even HP Compaq haven’t been able to achieve it with the AirLife.

If I was building a tablet I’d be praying for Google to free-up that marketplace and app-suite and I would be praying that my investors didn’t pull out during the waiting period. That waiting period is unknown right now and investors really don’t like broken critical paths without a fix date.

The iPad has already conquered this new market and consumers looking for an alternative handheld device will have to wait and pray that Google, Nokia and Intel; with their Marketplace, OVI and AppUp stores, accelerate their work and get a solution to the integrators before time runs out.  Palm’s WebOS could be an option to look at too.

Watch out for Archos in the summer because their PMP, MID and tablet strategy hinges 100% on Android. If it comes with Marketplace, we can all  breath again. If not, we might as well all buy an iPad and have some fun while we wait for 2011.

CID = Consumer Internet Device.

The 9 inch screen size may seem strange to some but that 1024×768 screen on the iPad combined with its 700gm, 1.5lb weight enables three key features. Long-term use, high quality and multi-user capability.

Based on my ever-evolving ‘Mobile Computing Segmentation’ diagram and  with recent input from DevMob 2010, I’ve put together a list of applications that would sit well on the iPad [Specs and latest info] and you’ll see the three features I’ve mentioned drop out straight away but before we start, here’s the diagram which gives you some idea of the applications that won’t be unique to the iPad and may be more suited to other form factors.

Click to enlarge.

Clearly there are applications like PIM, Voice and video telephony that would be better on a smaller device and if you were to take a look above the iPad, productivity rules but there are some distinct categories of applications that would work well on the iPad…

Entry-level 3D video. Screen real estate, high-bitrate video capability and screen resolution is required for 3D and for the 1-meter experience, the 9 inch iPad will  be the best device for it.

Basic Video Editing. We’ve seen some excellent video editing packages on the iPhone. I’m blown away by Reel Director every time I see it but there’s something missing from that. Getting accurate cuts, high quality preview and having more information and drag-and-drop capability is something that only starts to happen on a larger screen. I can’t wait to see a version of Reel Director for the iPad.

Multi-touch gaming. Multitouch with one hand is something. Having two hands to control a playing field is something else. Devices of 7 inch and above can start to offer this experience although the iPad needs a stand to really get the best out of this possibility.

Multi-person gaming. Two-handed multitouch doesn’t have to be done by one person. 9 inch allows two people to sit on the corner of a table and play with each other. Board games, arcade games and more. This multi-person aspect is unique to large-screen multi-touch devices.

Multi-person video/photo view. Think about the 1 meter viewing experience. Now think of two or three people sitting next to each other at 1-meter from the screen. For this experience to work well you need size and screen viewing angle. The iPad is set-up perfectly for this as it uses IPS screen technology that improves screen viewing angle. (IPS also improves brightness which means the iPad will be the only device of this type that can be used outdoors. Anyone for World Cup football on the go?

Page-per-view documents. At 7 inch screen size it’s very difficult to view pages of documents as they were created (books, diagrams, comics, presentations) without have to zoom and pan. At 9 inch page-per-view becomes a reality. Magazines, comics, newspapers and documents viewed without zoom or pan become more immersive. We’d argue that 11 or 12 inch would be a more comfortable size for such a usage model but at that size you increase weight so much that the device becomes difficult to hold.

Rich, long duration web experience. The minimum width for a full web page is somewhere around the 800 pixel mark. On a 7 inch screen this requires relatively high pixel densities which can require a zoom to make text comfortable. The 768-wide (in portrait) screen of the iPad is going to be better than most 10 inch ‘wide’ screens in portrait mode. The pixel density is of around 132 PPI will be extremely comfortable for almost everyone. (Think every member of the family.)

More iPad specifications and information in our iPad tracking page.

Rich document / media creation. While text input may not be perfect on the iPad, Titling a media-rich post of video, photos and diagrams will work very well. The 9 inch screen size allows for a workspace, a toolset and a media bar for dragging and organizing media segments in a posting, email or microblog. Smaller screen sizes make this a tough challenge terms of UI.

Media organization. What did you do when you sorted your postcards/beer mats/toy cars/cassettes/photos when you were a kid? The likelihood is that you tipped them out on the floor and started from there. The same principle applies on the iPad. You’ll have enough screen space for an assortment of overlaid documents, contacts, images, videos, books, music, figures and a set of bins/playlists/groups into which you can drag your content. Personally this sounds like a dream come true for sorting a library of digital photos.

Mapping. Electronic maps require resolution, size, outdoor readability, ruggedness, battery life and can be enhanced with connectivity and GPS. I am struggling to think of a more suitable device than the iPad.

There are more scenarios too and if you’ve got a thought, drop it in the comments. How about customer presentations, DJ applications, pilot applications, home control, multi-person video conferencing/PIP not to mention making every iPhone application into a high-quality version. Tamagotchi on the iPad will be so cute that you will have to buy two!

The themes here are 1) long-duration usage (comfort), 2) quality (more definition, capability) and at the top of the list and what I believe is the main ‘feature’ – the iPad allows (relatively rich!) Dads around the world to justify a Christmas 2010 purchase Multi-User. Forget the HD-TV, Blue-Ray player, Car seat-back screens, coffee machine, Wii because top of the family Christmas present list this year will be the “we can all use it darling. inch iPad.

UMPCPortal is where we take mobile devices and hold them up against a template of productivity, technology, battery life and engineering. We try and look deep into the technology to not only see what’s possible today, but what’s possible tomorrow and how it can fit into pro-sumer and productivity scenarios.

If you’re looking for a more consumer-focused ride though, that’s what we do over at Carrypad. There we take mobile devices and focus on the things that are important to the casual user. Price, features, ease of use, style and user interfaces play a huge part her because not everyone needs the Full Internet Experience when lazing around on the couch catching a little YouTube in the advertising breaks on TV.

We’ve Got an iPad on the Way, and You Can Too

In the last week we’ve invested in an iPad. Ben is going to take the reigns on it and see if he can work out where the device fits now and to track it as applications start feeding through. It seems strange to be following Apple into this new segment at such a low price but it looks like they really will have the first 3G-enabled consumer-focused tablet on the market beating the Dell Mini 5, the JooJoo and the IDC ultra by a long margin.

The Top Consumer Internet Devices.

The database has been running for a while now and we’re seeing an interesting Top 5 battle. Consistently at the top is the Dell Mini 5. This 5 inch Android-based handheld tablet promises to trump the already-popular Archos 5 in two ways. It will not only contain a full 3G and voice radio but it will also be one of the first MIDs (i.e. a device targeted at Internet use as it’s primary function) with a full suite of Google applications. That means marketplace which means a whole new opportunity for developers to work with a huge 800×480 screen.

Also knocking around at the top are the ICD Ultra which should be available later this year. The Notion Ink Adam is a similar device and if they get the promised Pixel-Q1 screen in there it will be a great device for outdoor use.

More significant, I think, it the Archos 7 Home Tablet. This isn’t a powerful device but at $179, it should offer excellent value for the round-the-house experience. It’s claimed to offer a smooth video playback experience at near 720p quality along with a reasonable browsing experience and a good set of Android applications. Archos will be following-up with a whole range of Android-based devices later this year too so they are clearly putting their bets on the Android OS. If Google allows them to use their marketplace, the whole range of Archos devices will get a huge boost.

Of course, the iPad is going to be important but it’s not rising as high in the ‘charts’ as I expected. Maybe that’s still to come!

There’s a lot more news out there in the world of consumer devices but we’re going to be honest; you won’t find everything at Carrypad. There’s a lot of hype out there and a lot of products that just won’t get past stage one a showing at an exhibition. We’ll be focusing on the cream of the crop and only bringing you the news that you need to hear.

Check out more at Carrypad where you’ll also find the RSS feed and the ability to sign up for the daily email.

So yesterday was the big iPad pre-order day, and it sounds like lots of folks around the web were eagerly waiting to give Apple their money in advance for the upcoming iPad [Product page]. We we’re in that group of people, though not necessarily just because we like to give Apple money. We wanted to be sure to bring our readers coverage on this device which will inevitably be (and already has been) an influence on the tablet boom that we’re seeing. If you’d like to pre-order your very own iPad, Apple is now ready and willing to take your money. We should be getting ours on April 3rd, so be sure to stop back and check it out.

One new bit of info on the iPad front is that the switch on the side, above the volume rocker — that everyone presumed was a mute switch — is actually an orientation lock. If you’ve ever used an iPhone or iPod Touch in bed or while laying on a couch, you’ll know that it can be annoying if you want to lay sideways and read the page. The screen will auto-rate to landscape view, despite the fact that you want it in portrait. So it’s good to know that Apple added the switch to lock the auto-rotation for these sorts of situations.

I just noticed this post over at UMPCFever. It’ a photo set of an iPhone 4G. Is it the first iPad unboxing?

We guess it’s some sort of Shanzai rip-off but it’s looking good anyway! Stay tuned for an update on this.

Source: UMPCfever

Update: Trixxy thinks it’s a fanboy rendering. Highly likely but wow, these renderings are getting good.